1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal apparatus with a telephone function, such as a portable telephone.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, portable terminal apparatus such as portable telephones are remarkably developing, and it is demanded that they become further multifunctional, miniaturized and lightweight.
As for multifunction, it is almost becoming a matter of course that the portable telephone has a high-pixel digital camera mounted thereon in recent years. For instance, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-64575 discloses a technique for mounting two cameras facing mutually opposed directions on the portable terminal apparatus.
Here, the portable terminal apparatus such as a portable telephone is demanded to become further miniaturized and lightweight. For this reason, miniaturization and high-density mounting of its parts are underway. In that case, there is a problem of how to mount a camera on such a portable telephone of which miniaturization and high-density mounting are advanced.
The camera mounted on the portable telephone is in a form called a camera module (or a camera unit) having a lens and an image pickup device built therein. The camera module is a precision part which requires relative positions of the lens and image pickup device to be kept with high precision. Therefore, to mount the camera module inside the portable telephone, the camera has a structure in which the camera module is supported by a dedicated frame to securely fix it formed on a plate-like member called a chassis (or a frame) typically metallic, die-cast and strong enough to be hardly deformable. The foregoing patent document also indicates the structure in which the camera module is fixed on the chassis.
However, multifunctionality has advanced, and the chassis has various parts built into it, such as having two liquid crystal display screens mounted and a flexible board fixed thereon, for instance. For this reason, if the frame for mounting the camera module is provided on the chassis, it becomes an obstacle to wiring of the flexible board for instance. Thus, it is becoming difficult to fix the camera module on the chassis. It is impossible to render the chassis larger-size in spite of the demands for miniaturization, and so there is a trend that the chassis itself is miniaturized.